


Rivers Till I Reach You

by sarahworm



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, F/F, harlivy week 2020, i'm not satisfied with the title but i almost never am so what else is new
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:28:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25930609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahworm/pseuds/sarahworm
Summary: Harley was supposed to be completing a task, but she doesn't much like following the path.
Relationships: Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	Rivers Till I Reach You

**Author's Note:**

> For Harlivy Week day four, but published in the early hours of day seven, oops.

She was being punished.

Technically, she was being reprimanded. Given official guidance. Lightly reeducated.

The Queen had snickered as she said that last one, her laugh like bells being tickled by butterfly wings. Harley had found it so charming, back when she was first Noticed, so many seasons ago. Now it just rang sharp and hollow against her ears.

She hadn’t even done anything _wrong_. Nothing any fae wouldn’t have done, if given the opportunity and the inclination. Well, none of the others had her imagination, so they probably wouldn’t have thought of it, but still. They would have laughed at Harley’s antics, those poor people tripping over themselves giving offerings to a very ordinary pigeon Harley had convinced them was a god, if only she had picked another village.

It wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t have known that the Queen’s second cousin had loved a four-generations-dead human and that the whole village was now blessed and off-limits. She hadn’t had the privilege to collect the spoils that long-gone human’s family still left out every night. She had _no way_ of knowing. It wasn’t fair.

Harley kicked at the dirt. Sent on a stupid messenger errand that was far, far below the status she thought she’d earned and made to walk, to boot. Harley could only fly in spurts, and only when she’d managed to forage a very specific mushroom, but they’d taken the carefully-woven charms that made her able to bound through the trees and leap over the ground easy as anything.

She bent down, picked up a rock, and then chucked it as hard as she could.

It hit a tree trunk and dropped, and then she heard a splash.

She’d made it to the boundary.

Harley pushed forward through the foliage. The narrow path she’d been following was barely a path at all, just a thread of bare ground as wide as her foot, spider’s-silk weaving through the grass. Fairies so rarely walked. The going hadn’t been too bad, but the grass was high in places, and bushes waved at her waist in others.

The river came so suddenly that she thought she might have fallen in if she hadn’t been looking for it.

It wound beneath the trees without even a sound or a visible ripple. The break in the tree canopy meant that Harley felt a hint of sun on her face for the first time in a while, but none of that was reflected in the water’s surface. It seemed to swallow the light, giving nothing back. The banks on either side fell off abruptly, and there was a two-foot drop to the water, so it couldn’t have been very deep, but she couldn’t see the bottom.

There was no bridge.

Harley rolled her eyes and sighed. “I better get this over with,” she muttered before dropping into the water.

It came only up to her kneecaps, but it was ice-cold and seemed to grip at her skin. The ground under the soles of her feet wasn’t rocky or sandy, but devoid of any recognizable texture, shifting slightly as she moved forward.

Halfway across, the current that had been just a suggestion became stronger, tugging at her legs and sending goosebumps up and down her flesh. She ground her teeth and kept walking, dragging her feet through the water like weights. At the opposite bank, she grasped on to some tufts of grass and hauled herself out, panting.

She lay there on the bank, cheek pressed into the dirt. She’d made it, she was across, on her own two feet, too.

But now she was in Unseelie land.

The forest on this side of the river was wilder, vines snaking around tree trunks and reaching between branches, bushes snarled up in each other. Harley looked around, and found a path like the one she’d just left, faint and desperate in the undergrowth.

Harley sighed again, clambering to her feet. The river water hadn’t left her wet, exactly, but it had left her calves sore. She pointed her toes, frowning. She needed to stretch, explore. All this walking had left her bored. Monotony did a girl no good.

She levered herself up the nearest tree, relishing in the sharp bends of her limbs and the feel of the bark under her palms.

At the top, she broke through the canopy and looked out.

To the south, where she’d come from, she could just barely make out the faint glimmer that marked the seat of the Seelie Court. Her Queen didn’t mind advertising where she could be found – it was all part of the game. Where was the fun in having an opulent court and oodles of power if you didn’t lure people to come challenge you over it?

On the other hand, if Harley looked to the north, she saw nothing but trees and more trees.

Except – she narrowed her eyes and leaned. There was something different, near where she was. A hint of a break in the brush, a consistent break.

Like a path. Or, not fully formed enough to be a path, but a…pattern. Somebody had walked there, recently. Maybe not often, but enough.

_I’ve made it to the other side_ , Harley thought. _They can’t track me here. I need something new, I need fun._

She memorized the location of the path, came down from her tree, and set off to find it.

***

The forest was quiet today. Some days, Ivy was jarred from her peace by court patrols coming too close, or a royal hunt straying from the typical grounds, but this afternoon had been undisturbed.

So far.

She knew about the intruder before she heard her, the trees sending shooting sparks of nervous energy through their roots until they reached her. A stranger, lithe and agile, but moving through the woods with no thought to who she might be bothering. Marks and scents of the Seelie court all over her.

Ivy could have sent vines and thorns to block her path, but she was curious.

So, when the stranger burst through the last of the undergrowth along her path and stumbled into the clearing that made up part of Ivy’s home, Ivy was waiting for her.

The stranger was indeed dressed in the manner of the Seelie court, but though her clothes were vibrantly colored, there were a few places where they’d clearly been mended and made over. So not nobility, then. She had flaxen hair and was breathing hard, clearly having been marching through the forest for some time, but her eyes were bright as she looked around, taking in the break in the trees, the lush vines and branches hanging overhead, the flowers and moss carpeting the ground.

Then she spotted Ivy, and she smiled.

“Hello!” the stranger crowed. “I knew I was tromping through the forest, but I didn’t know I’d be meeting her!”

Ivy, who had posted herself in the shadow of a large oak tree, strode several steps forward. “What brings someone from the Seelie lands through this way?” she asked.

The stranger dug in a pocket and brandished a letter with a shining seal. “Messenger errand. It’s for the Unseelie Queen. Say, could point me in the right direction?”

“Due north,” Ivy said, shortly.

The stranger made a face. “Ya think? This whole forest is due north.”

Ivy said nothing.

The stranger sighed and put the letter back in her pocket. “Alright then,” she said. “I’ll just keep wandering.” In a blink she was up the nearest tree and perched on a branch, leg dangling. She took out a small piece of bread and chewed on it. “Want some?” she asked Ivy.

Ivy raised an eyebrow and the stranger laughed. “Yeah, didn’t think so.” She popped the last of the bread in her mouth. “You can call me Harley, by the way.”

It wasn’t a full name, of course. “Ivy,” she said, sending a vine creeping up from the ground to wrap lightly around Harley’s hanging leg as an introduction. Harley laughed, and drawing nearer, Ivy noticed something.

“You’re human,” she said.

Harley lifted her chin in defiance. “Swapped for fae as a baby and as good as,” she said. “I’m nothing like a human.”

Ivy lifted herself up to the adjacent branch so she could look at Harley directly. “No,” she said at last. “You aren’t.”

“And you?”

“And I what?”

Harley propped her chin on her fist and leaned her face closer to Ivy’s, like she was studying her. Ivy felt suddenly that if she’d been able to blush, she’d be rose-red.

“You’re obviously powerful,” Harley said. “And where I’m from, power like that gets you something. I figure it’s the same across the river. So what’re you doing in this little bower?”

“I don’t know if that’s really the business of a Seelie representative.”

Harley glanced away for a moment. “I’m barely one,” she muttered. Turning her cheeky smile back on, she added, “tell me a good enough story and maybe I’ll stray.”

Ivy liked her. She couldn’t help but like her. “Walk with me as I tend to some things,” she said, “and maybe you’ll find out.”

***

Harley had been around a lot of fae, but never one quite like this. Ivy was clearly powerful, magic in her veins and all that, but there was no pretension, no haughty airs. She was intimidating, sure, but Harley could deal with that. She liked that, actually.

She’d never met one who was green before, either.

All in all, she was very…refreshing.

Ivy walked among the plants, on no consistent path that Harley could make out, stopping every once in a while to tend to them, which mostly seemed to involve speaking to them. Or something. Harley wasn’t paying much attention to the mechanics, but her eyes were pinned to Ivy anyway.

“So, that story?” Harley asked finally.

Ivy laughed. “I was a fixture in the court, until I wasn’t,” she said.

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened. They were pretentious and useless, so I left.”

Harley fingered the letter in her pocket. “Yeah,” she said. “That sounds about right.”

Ivy who had collected a variety of various seeds and leaves and berries, sat down and began mixing and working them together. Harley followed, still watching. Ivy eyed her. “Are you being punished for something?”

Harley relayed the story about the pigeon. “They didn’t appreciate it,” she concluded. “All stuck in the mud.”

Ivy laughed.

“Y’know, I don’t wish I lived with the humans, obviously,” Harley went on, “but sometimes the court is so _boring._ ”

“So leave,” Ivy said.

Harley snorted. “And do what? I worked hard to get Noticed, and they may be kind of the worst, but I don’t have many other options. You know. Oughta be grateful and all that.”

Ivy looked up and met Harley’s gaze, her eyes lit with an intensity Harley hadn’t seen before. “You said you weren’t like other humans,” she said. “So don’t be.”

A chill swept over Harley, head to toe, like the cool breeze proceeding a storm. She looked back to Ivy, but for once, couldn’t think of anything to say.

Ivy broke eye contact to look down at the…thing she’d been creating. She twisted her hands, and it folded into a small little sachet. “Hold out your hand,” she said.

Harley did. Ivy placed the sachet in her palm. “This is for you,” she said.

“What is it?”

“It keeps you from being tracked, buries any marks they laid on you.” Ivy folded Harley’s fingers over it, encasing the sachet in her fist. Ivy’s own fingers were soft on Harley’s skin. Without thinking, Harley put her other hand over them.

Their eyes met again. “Come with me,” Harley said. “You must hate being so close to the court you left. Let’s go find somewhere else to live, and make up our own rules, and forget about all of them.”

Ivy said nothing, but she smiled, and a vine snuck across Harley’s shoulder to tap her on the cheek.

“We could stay in a forest, and you can take care of the plants, and I’ll bother the humans and tell you when they’re getting too into cutting down trees so we can scare them off. What do you say?”

Ivy stood up, taking Harley by both hands and pulling her along. “We may have to travel a ways,” she said, “but I say we should go as far as we want to.”

***

They reached the river days later, at sunset. Not the one between Seelie and Unseelie lands – this one was deeper, wilder, rushing past shores neither of them had been to before.

As Harley watched it, she was suddenly swept off her feet by a tangle of vines that carried her up and over to place her on the other side, the farthest she’d ever been from the place she was raised.

When Ivy joined her, she took Harley’s hand and laced their fingers together. “Now that we’re going to be on our own, there’s something I was thinking of,” she said. “I can make a lot of poisons and wards, and if we’re living together, I think I should make you immune. Just in case. And that way you can have a little of my power, too.”

“Go ahead,” Harley said, “I love that idea. Immune me. How do you do it?”

Ivy looked at her for just a moment and then kissed her, slowly, one hand still holding Harley’s and the other coming up to Harley’s jaw. “Like that,” she said.

Harley felt a smile spread across her face. “I’ve never seen magic like that before. But I don’t think I’m quite safe yet – maybe you should try again, just to be sure.”


End file.
